Welcome to the Learning Decade!

Bravo! I’m all for that. Of course, I wouldn’t limit the value of learning to just one decade, but if we must, this one is as good as any.

Better, says Herring. All because of the Great Recession. “…[M]ore and more organizations recognize that learning can help solve the most vexing economic and financial problems of the day. As a result, we predict that the years leading up to 2020 will be known as ‘The Learning Decade.'”

What about that?!?

He goes on to note the key drivers behind increases in corporate learning investments:

Beyond Commodity (determining “how to efficiently synthesize this fungible data in order to obtain the incisive clarity required to drive genuine innovation and growth” — yep, that’s what it says)

Virtuous Circle (“Knowledge will become the new value-add, and the ultimate growth differentiator, as we approach 2020.”)

Emerging Markets

Industry Change

Industry Consolidation

Brain Drain

Failing Grade (we’ll come back to this one)

Return to Growth (and we’ll come back to this one)

Future Jobs (this one, too)

Knowledge Workers

Leadership Vacuum

Culture Change

Unanticipated Conditions

All of these offer tremendous opportunities for associations and professional societies’ learning departments. Read the article. Brainstorm all the ways you could fill the gaps that Herring notes amidst this list — you’ll probably even think of a few specific to your industry that he might have missed.

I’ll get you started. Take another look at the three items I promised we’d come back to.

Each of these are very specific to education in general. Some employees (and potential association members) will hire on with gaps in their education we could be filling (Failing Grade); others will have been out of the workforce during this long recovery and will have some educational catching-up to do (Return To Growth); and still other industries will see jobs emerge and change as a result of the shifting times (Future Jobs) — again creating gaps we can fill.

Okay… now that your brain is working, go read that article and start your own list of possibilities.

2 Responses to “Welcome to the Learning Decade!”

Thanks for stopping by, Sam! Just downloaded your company’s e-book on social learning and am looking forward to taking a closer look at it! (Isn’t it fabulous how things loop around in the Web and lead us to discover resources we didn’t know were out there?!?)